Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future

by Anita Say Chan

In the face of such developments, Zuckerberg’s manifesto asserted an explicitly Silicon Valley–centric worldview that not only conspicuously “forgot” and excised any mention of the growing violence linked to it and other social media platforms, but projected elite, Western data scientists’ and Big Tech companies’ exclusive right to continuously build. Indeed, so firmly did he defend the ultimate virtue of companies’ technological designs, whatever the evidence of their impact, he continued to insist that they were the best solutions for a “free society.” He would take until the end of the over twelve-page letter to admit to “making mistakes,” only euphemistically calling the company’s errors “operational scaling issues” born out of growth that had outpaced its “social infrastructure.” He blithely acknowledged that Facebook might have been challenged to respond to populations who “do not share its vision of global connection.” But he asserted that “in times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.”